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Trampled By Turtles' Ryan Young talks hip hop, bluegrass, Prince, Bob Dylan and more

 
Tampa Bay Times
Published March 1, 2015

When Trampled By Turtles takes the stage at this weekend's Gasparilla Music Festival, you'll see guy with a fiddle, a guy with a banjo, a guy with a mandolin, a guy with an acoustic guitar and a guy with an acoustic bass.

Sounds a lot like a bluegrass band. But they're not.

"We didn't start playing in order to be a bluegrass band," said the guy with the fiddle, Ryan Young. "This thing was just a chance for us to play our acoustic instruments, and it turns out it's almost the exact instrumentation of a bluegrass band. But that wasn't the original intent."

If you listen closely to their seven studio albums, you can hear that. Trampled By Turtles may be a staple on the Billboard bluegrass charts, but they have more in common with the Avett Brothers or Mumford and Sons than Bill Monroe or Earl Scruggs. Since forming in Duluth, Minn., in 2003, they have consistently blurred the lines between bluegrass, folk and Americana, forging a crowd-pleasing sound that has riled up festival crowds from Stagecoach (pop country) to MerleFest (traditional bluegrass) to Bonnaroo (rock, jam and everything in between).

"We're always a little bit different from everybody else, which I kind of appreciate," Young said. "We play at country festivals, and we're the odd band that sort of fits, but doesn't quite. And then sometimes we'll play bluegrass festivals, and in that case, we're also the odd band that doesn't quite fit, but sort of does. ... And then we'll play rock festivals like Lollapalloza or Bonnaroo or whatever, and in that case, we're also the different band. We're the bluegrass band in that case."

Calling before a recent show in Laramie, Wyo., Young talked about festivals, Minnesota music and more. Here are excerpts.

I can imagine, being from Minnesota, you must have one or two good performing-in-a-snowstorm stories.

Yeah, back before we knew to say no to such things. We've played some outdoor wintertime shows where your fingers are just numb from the wind and the cold and it's kind of ridiculous.

How does your tuning hold up in weather that cold?

It's actually not too bad, as long as you let your instrument acclimate. If you're going to be playing in the cold, you just leave your instrument out in the cold for a while, because it's the changing of the temperature that makes it go out of tune. As long as it's set at that cold temperature, and you tune it at that temperature, it should stay there.

Americana music really tends to galvanize people in a very positive way at big music festivals, whether it's you guys, the Avett Brothers, Mumford and Sons or whoever. Why does that type of music do so well in such a big setting?

Well, all of the bands that you mentioned are folky bands, but a little bit more specific than that, our music tends to have a lot of energy to it. Not every song, of course — there's slow, pretty songs, too. But we have our share of fast-paced, dancin', feel-good tunes, and that translates well to people who are trying to have a good time at a festival.

Trampled By Turtles' music is, in many ways, somewhat intimate, especially on Wild Animals.

You're right, our newest album has more slower tunes. But when we play a live show, we mix it up. We'll play maybe a couple of slow tunes, and then some medium, and then fast ones, just to make the show breathe a little bit and not be monotonous. The other way would be bad, too, to just do a bunch of fast tunes. Our new album does have more slow tunes to it, but when we create setlists, we play a lot of our old tunes and make sure there's a good number of fast ones and upbeat ones in there, too.

Do you feel out of place performing at, say, Stagecoach, which is more of a pure mainstream country festival?

In a way, but I don't mind it. I actually prefer that. If I was in, god forbid, a pop country band (laughs), playing at a festival with a bunch of pop country bands, I would just be a guy in a band whose band sounds like every other band at this festival. Our band is different. I think people enjoy that. They get into it. They're like, "Hey, it's something different! It's not a cheesy pop country band!"

I've read where you've all cited hip hop as a big influence on Trampled By Turtles. Can you explain that?

We all listen to a wide variety of music. I didn't grow up on bluegrass music or anything like that. I listened to hip hop as a kid, and rock, and got into punk rock and jazz later on in life. All of that stuff is an influence, even if it might not be super obvious. The hip hop thing — you might not be able to hear that so much, but deep down, it's there. When I was really young, that's when Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys were huge, in the mid-'80s, and I just loved that. I listened to that Run-DMC tape probably more than anything. There's little things, maybe arrangement-wise, or the way things build up or the way things break down in songs, that might have come to us through hip hop.

Has anyone from Trampled By Turtles ever run in the same circles as Atmosphere, or anyone else from the Minneapolis hip hop scene?

We didn't grow up together or anything, but we've met each other a bunch of times, and we've played shows together, so we know each other now. Back in the day, we didn't have the same group of friends or anything. But I was aware of them right after their first record came out, and I met them some number of years after that. They're awesome. I love them.

Have you ever met Prince?

No. I've been to his studio. And I know some people that have recorded on his records — not members of his band, necessarily, although I have met members of his band. But there's this one woman in particular who sang on his latest record, and she went to Paisley Park and she didn't even meet him. He was there watching on closed-circuit TV, and he had a little buzzer, where he could talk to the engineer, but he didn't come out and meet anybody. She's in the studio, and she'd sing, and the buzzer would buzz, and the engineer would pick it up and be like, "Uh-huh ... sure ... okay ... okay ... sounds good ... okay," and then hang it up, and he'd be like, "How about we try..." He's getting instructions from Prince, but he wouldn't come in the room. He's a weird guy.

How about Duluth's own Bob Dylan? Have you met him?

No. We've opened up for him, in a way. We played with My Morning Jacket, who did that tour with Bob Dylan and Wilco, and we're friends with My Morning Jacket. When they were coming through the Twin Cities, they called us up, and we played a few songs. And at that point, the tour had been going on maybe three weeks or something, and I remember asking Jim James, "Hey, so what's Bob Dylan like?" He's like, "I don't know. I haven't met him yet." I guess once you're that big, once you're that kind of superstar, you just don't want to deal with people being like, "Oh my god, it's you! I f---ing love you and I've been listening to you since I was a kid and I love this record and do you remember when you did this?!?" They'd probably hear this all day, every day, if they talk to people. So they just don't talk to people. (laughs)

This begs the question: Who do you think would be harder to approach and have a conversation with, Prince or Bob Dylan?

Oooh. I would probably be more tongue-tied with Bob Dylan. I love both of their music, but Bob Dylan is a little bit more influential toward me, and I would probably have a hard time coming up with something intelligent to say. (laughs)